Giveaway and Raffle Picker

How to pick giveaway winners

1. Optionally type a Giveaway name (optional) so the summary says which contest it was.
2. Paste the entries into Entries, then choose the Entry format: - One entry per line: a list of names, emails or ticket numbers, for example a column copied from a spreadsheet or a form export. - Comments: first @username on each line: paste comments copied from Instagram, TikTok, X or a similar site. The first @username on each line becomes the entry; lines without one are skipped and counted. - Comment blocks: first line of each block: for comments pasted as blocks separated by an empty line, where the first line is the author’s name.
3. Keep One chance per person (remove duplicates) ticked so that someone who commented five times is entered once. Untick it only if your rules give one chance per comment or per ticket.
4. Open Exclude entries (host, team…) and list the accounts that may not win, such as your own brand account or staff members.
5. Set the number of Winners and Alternates, then press Draw winners.

The line under the entries always tells you how many valid entries there are and how many duplicates, exclusions or skipped lines were removed, so you can check before drawing.

The result summary

After a short shuffle, the Winners and the Alternates (in order) are listed. The Result summary contains everything needed to publish the result transparently:

• the giveaway name, and the date and time of the draw with your time zone and the UTC time;
• the number of valid entries, with duplicates and exclusions removed;
• the numbered winners and alternates;
• the method used;
• the SHA-256 fingerprint of the entry list.

Use Copy to paste it into a post or a story, or Download to keep a text file for your records. The fingerprint is a 64-character code calculated from the exact list of valid entries: if you publish the list and its fingerprint, anyone can check that the list was not changed after the draw.

Alternates

Winners often don’t answer, or turn out to be ineligible. Instead of redrawing, which can look suspicious, draw alternates at the same time: if the first winner does not claim the prize within your deadline, the first alternate takes their place, and so on. Winners and alternates are all different entries.

A fair and private draw

The winners are chosen with your browser’s cryptographic random number generator (the Web Crypto API), using unbiased sampling without replacement: every valid entry has exactly the same chance, and every possible set of winners is equally likely. The shuffle on screen is only for show; the result is decided when you press the button. Entries never leave your device: nothing is uploaded or stored.

Good practice for social media contests: publish the rules first (dates, eligibility, one entry per person or not), record your screen during the draw, and share the summary with the result.